Briana Williams back in the 200m at Carifta after schedule changeBy Leighton Levy April 19, 2019

Briana Williams is back in 200m at the 2019 Carifta Games which begins at the Truman Bodden Stadium in the Cayman Islands on Saturday following a change to the 200m schedule.

Changes were made, insiders said because there were not enough athletes to contest the event over three rounds because of what was a congested schedule, especially for athletes who are also competing in the 100m.

Williams, the 2018 Austin Sealy Award winner, withdrew from the 200m earlier this week because the 200m schedule included having the semi-finals and finals on the same day in contravention of the established international convention.

Head of Competition Darrel Rankine defended the schedule telling Sportsmax.TV that he sent the schedule out to the respective federations from December 2018. He suggested that the feedback he received did not include concerns over the scheduling for the 200m.

However, Dr Warren Blake, President of the JAAA, who Williams is representing, refuted Rankine’s claims but revealed that he had requested that they make adjustments the schedule.

Numerous phone calls to Rankine’s mobile phone went unanswered, but Williams’ coach, Ato Boldon, confirmed Friday that the schedule was changed and that Williams will now run the 100m, 200m, and the sprint relays for Jamaica in what will likely be her final Carifta Games.

Jamaica has won the Carifta Games every year since 1985.

Logged

De higher a monkey climbs is de less his ass is on de line, if he works for FIFA that is! ;-)

The team actually did better than I thought they would, considering they were the very last team to arrive the afternoon before the Saturday morning start of the Games (they still managed to stay until Wednesday, though). This brilliant "very last team to arrive, but stay two days AFTER the meet ends" is reportedly fine, since "US Universities do it so". I won't begin to go into how dotish that statement is, and how it's emblematic of how business is done in the modern NAAA, where one idiot says something, and everyone goes ahead, even though it is not only patently false, but is also out of context, and hurts the athletes. If you don't understand why being in the lobby the afternoon before, and then on the track at 8pm the night before, when heats start the morning after, then I would like you and all who think like you to please go find something else to do and stay away from running logistics for teams traveling to compete internationally. There is a REASON why the Bahamas and Jamaica were among the first to arrive, and all of them are not physical reasons.

There were one or two real revelations in the sprints, including a junior girl who ran 23.3, currently the fastest 200m among TTO athletes, including the seniors.

The huge red flags were: NO distance event threats, very few field highlights, and very little depth overall.

In addition, Bahamas (yes the country with 1/3 our population) doesn't even see us a threat anymore.

They are focused AHEAD, on Jamaica, who sent a B team and still murdered everyone.